• Quote from Simone de Beauvoir’s Mémoires d’une Jeune Fille Rangée about her désespoir. On second thought, pretentious. Plus Facebook’s auto-translate would mangle the meaning.
• Opinion of I, Tonya. On second thought, my private opinion. Why share?
• Opinion of Darkest Hour. Ditto.
• Opinion of Moontide. Ditto.
• Comment on depressing story in news. I think a dozen people have already said the same thing. And if I try for originality I’ll end up making another Ayn Rand reference and leaving the wrong impression.
• Comment on American political situation. What is there to say, really? Parallels to French under occupation kind of pretentious as well as obscure.

A man in town for a convention asked if we had any books on dachshunds. No, I said, after conscientiously doing a keyword check, was he a dachshund fan? he wasn’t, his wife was. But stronger than a fan she was…”obsessed?” I suggested. He bought a psychedelic … Read more

Best line: “There’s a reason we teach you correct posture. If your pelvis isn’t tilted forward, the organs in the area are affected unfavorably.”

The Plot: Poor Louise, married and with an eighteen-year-old daughter has never had an orgasm. Ever since that date-rape in college she’s been all twisted up inside, and marriage hasn’t helped–she’s mired in suburban misery. “The hollandaise had been spectacular” but that can’t disguise the fact that her life is one “cruelly civilized evening of superficiality and loneliness” after another. Now hubby Warren is chasing after her best friend, while daughter Betty is enamored … Read more

Book Jacket Copy: “Then Elizabeth’s burgeoning, formless emotions, blown hither and yon by the strife around her, crystallized into a youthful and innocent passion for Nonie, nourished by Nonie’s kindness and Elizabeth’s idealization of the relationship that Carter and Nonie seemed to enjoy.”

A dull southern gothic, penned by first-time author and Carson McCullers-wannabe, Zena Garret. The “About the author” blurb gives the reader fair warning: “Her writing career was postponed, however, because of the happy discovery that she had talent as a sculptress.”

The Plot: Eleven-year-old Elizabeth is bored and unhappy on the family farm near … Read more

Twisted Loves

“A story of strange passions and forbidden lusts that changed a young girl into a twisted sinner!”

This is the template for the exploitation pulp. Lots of big breasted, horny women, sex, sex, and more sex, and then a heterosexual rescue on the final pages. From the cover to the content, this is what most people think of when they think of lesbian pulp.

The Plot: The book opens with Connie Chapin getting drunk in a Third Avenue bar, being mauled by a fellow customer, and then passing out in the street. She is rescued by Lee Fielding, “a tall … Read more

In her youth, Deming dated Lotte Lenya and had a long-term relationship with Mary Meigs, If you’re thinking she was part of the triangle that Meigs wrote about in Medusa Head, no, she was in the earlier triangle, the one that ended with Deming and Meigs splitting up and Meigs going off with Marie-Claire Blais to have the second… Read more

Paula Christian’s books are an exception. The career is always part of the story, whether the heroine is a stewardess, a writer, or a photographer as in the novel … Read more

Caspary wrote Laura in 1942, and the eponymous heroine is a curtain opener for the career girls who would later flood the fiction market. In 1943 the New York Times called this story of an advertising executive who is presumed murdered and then turns up alive and becomes a … Read more